Social Media

9 Companies at the Web 2.0 Expo

The Web 2.0 Expo is coming, and we've been digging in to the social startups attending...

BizHuddle is an online advise hub for small businesses. Here, those in the small business community can share ideas, discuss topics, and help each other out. Stuck? They've got an Ask A Coach feature to get a mentor perspective. They've currently got a lot under wraps, so we're anxious to see what they'll be revealing after Monday.

Cambrian House is a place for those involved in the many aspects of web creation to come together for a given project. An idea can be posted by any user and developers, graphic artists, coders and the rest can find your project to work on. It's built on the idea of crowd sourcing to get your project completed in a truly collaborative manner, and have fun doing it.

Coghead, currently in public beta, is an online business solution that allows you to create your own application to fit your needs. Use their template, create your own from scratch, or do a bit of both. They've incorporated a drag-and-drop user interface for easy customization, and an API for developers. They'll be launching their live service at this year's Expo.

Dekoh, the open source challenger to Adobe's Apollo, will launch their public alpha on Monday at Expo. They've provided a platform for applications to be built for offline desktop use with automatic integration upon gaining an Internet connection. Their free service already includes a music player, virtual library, and photo sharing communities, allowing friends to see what's going on with your desktop media without you having to upload anything to a web-based service provider.

Egnyte is a file management system that provides solutions for both ends of a working individual; personal and business. Installing Egnyte and choosing a folder to activate Egnyte with will upload its contents on a regular basis. Its automated functions will save versions of all your content every time it's been edited, as well as organizing all new content that's been added. Their sharing features are just as organized and automated, making for a very efficient tool that can keep the whole team updated.

Grouptivity has offered a way to form discussions around the things you've found on the web. They've enabled a way to share items to be emailed to a group from one location, and everyone can participate through their email accounts without having to register and login. Add a grouptivity bookmark to your browser toolbar to collect information and create a group mail to initiate discussion about it later on. It simplifies the way in which information can be sent and shared via email.

LeapTag is a semantic search that is installed in your browser and tracks your internet behavior based on the tags you provide, and gives you relevant search results for your next query. You give a thumbs up and down for each result so LeapTag can further tailor its search to your needs. It's similar to StumbleUpon and Searchbots, among other bookmarking tools. We'll see what they reveal at Expo next week.

MedioStream is a company dealing with the facilitation of user generated content, to some extent. They provide real time software solutions for desktop and internet streaming. Last month they announced SingStreet, a subscription-based karaoke service, and at Expo they'll launch a hip-hop site called dabeetz. I'm not sure who chose this name, but I kindly suggest not making a mockery of your target demographic.

Netvocate is pretty under wraps right now, but from what I can see, they've got a plan to widgetize ads and make them customizable for others for distribution marketing purposes. In this sense, the entire user base of a social network or other online community can be leveraged to do the marketing for you. It's a technique that some have tried before, but it's been mostly companies working with their own widgets for the purpose of spreading their content and not their brand.

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